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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25148248">Blood of the Wolf</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren'>Lomonaaeren</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Potter Rage [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Gray Fleamont Potter, Harry Potter was Raised by Other(s), Potions, Potter Family-centric (Harry Potter), Pre-Hogwarts, Ruthless Fleamont Potter, Torture, Werewolves</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 03:07:45</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>10,334</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25148248</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. Fleamont Potter goes on protecting his grandson Harry Potter from all sorts of threats, even unexpected ones that show up in the form of old friends and seemingly hopeless infections.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Fleamont Potter &amp; Harry Potter, Sirius Black &amp; Fleamont Potter, Sirius Black &amp; Remus Lupin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Potter Rage [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1567849</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>114</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>1983</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This fic, as requested by many people, is part of a series including “Fruit of the Golden Tree” and “Instruments of Shadow,” and so won’t make sense without your having read those first. This is also one of my “From Litha to Lammas” fics being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August this year, and will have three parts to be posted over the next few days.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“How would you look if someone came up to you and greeted you by saying you were a half-blood?”</p><p>Harry leaned back on the couch and gave a thoughtful scowl. His eyebrows arched a little and his mouth quirked in a way that made Fleamont smile despite himself.</p><p>“Close,” he said. “Not quite. You want to imply that they’re not worthy of your time if they ask a question like that, rather than imply that you’re angry about what they said.”</p><p>“But it’s <em>hard </em>to control my expression that way, Grand.” Harry let his face fall back into its normal lines and reached innocently for a chocolate biscuit on the edge of his plate. Fleamont looked at him, and Harry let his hand fall back with a sigh. He’d already had three chocolate biscuits, which was his limit for the day. “Why do I have to learn it?”</p><p>“So that you can fight your enemies,” Fleamont said, and watched Harry lean forwards intently. He objected about some of the lessons, especially the ones in genealogy and the right way to walk and what clothes to wear, but he always paid attention when Fleamont talked about the reason. “You know that even if most people can’t harm you directly, they’ll still try to do it by insulting you, or making you embarrass yourself, or hurting your friends. So one of the ways to protect yourself is make them look ridiculous so they’ll stop doing some of that.”</p><p>Harry nodded. Fleamont wasn’t surprised that he needed more than one reminder. Harry was only seven, after all. And he hadn’t benefited from growing up in the wizarding world behind wards and with someone there to teach him all the time before this. The Muggles had barely let him learn anything in his first year of primary school.</p><p>Fleamont breathed out and reminded himself, again, that Vernon and Petunia Dursley were dead. The best way to erode their legacy of mistreatment for Harry was to teach him to defend himself and help him heal the wounds by showing that he had adults who truly cared for him.</p><p>Fleamont had no talent in necromancy to resurrect their spirits, in any case.</p><p>“Will I ever get so good that no one can hurt me?”</p><p>Fleamont softened at the sound of the misery in Harry’s voice. Well, misery and hope. He leaned forwards and touched Harry’s hand. “No. There’s always the chance that someone who’s not an enemy can hurt you. A child or a friend or a family member. But we’re going to make sure that your enemies are as far away as possible from you. Even when they’re sitting right next to you.”</p><p>Harry nodded, his eyes determined, and reached for the teacup that Fleamont had put in front of him again. Fleamont was having him practice gestures and expressions with and without props.</p><p>A sharp knock sounded on the door of the sitting room. Fleamont smiled at Harry as he hastily put the cup back down and said, “Come in, Sirius.” He was the only other human living in Potter Place at the moment, and the house-elves never bothered to knock.</p><p>Sirius burst in and nodded at Harry, but focused on Fleamont. Fleamont found his hand on his wand. That was a bad sign, since Harry was the center of Sirius’s life. And an attack if Sirius thought something was wrong wouldn’t be out of the bounds of possibility. He was too impulsive even for a Gryffindor.</p><p>“Padfoot? What’s wrong?” Harry had turned around so that he was hanging over the back of the couch, his mouth open.</p><p>“I found Remus Lupin,” Sirius declared, and then flung himself into a chair and began to weep.</p><p>Harry hovered, looking distressed. Fleamont glanced at him and said, “Harry, why don’t you go to your room and write a letter to Draco Malfoy? Remember that we were discussing whether it might be safe to have him come over.” In reality, Fleamont had decided it would be safe when he had foolproof blackmail material on Lucius Malfoy, but Harry didn’t know that yet.</p><p>“Yeah,” Harry said, but he gave Sirius a worried glance.</p><p>“I’ll handle this,” Fleamont said, and spoke in the Grand voice that he knew Harry needed to hear just then, full of unwavering confidence. “I’ll make sure that both Padfoot and Moony are all right.”</p><p>Hearing the names that Sirius had told him so many stories about relaxed Harry, but Fleamont liked to think that part of it was his grandson learning to trust him, too. Harry nodded to him, and then turned and ran upstairs. Monster, the demon-leopard-shadow who had come to guard Harry in return for Pettigrew’s soul and a shard of Voldemort’s, flickered after him.</p><p>Fleamont locked the door with a simple spell that was still beyond Harry’s capability to undo and then knelt down in front of Sirius and looked hard at him. “What is going on?”</p><p>Sirius still appeared incoherent, so Fleamont called one of the house-elves without rising. “Brandy,” he told Zia, the ancient elf who appeared and looked appalled that Fleamont Potter was kneeling on the floor. “Make it as strong as you can without interfering with someone’s magic.” Elves could enhance the tastes of food as well as the effect of alcohol at command, although not many wizards ever bothered to find that out.</p><p>Sirius didn’t object, just staring straight ahead and opening and closing his hands. That spoke more than anything else to the state of shock he was in. Fleamont sat back, on the dark carpet, and frowned at him. He didn’t know why finding Remus Lupin, something Sirius had worked towards for months now, would damage him like this.</p><p>Unless…</p><p>“Did Lupin say that he was loyal to Dumbledore and refuse to speak to you?” he asked.</p><p>Sirius snapped enough out of his mood to shake his head. But then he took in a breath to speak and simply let it go again without speaking.</p><p>This was getting on Fleamont’s nerves.</p><p>He reached out to take the glass of brandy that Zia had brought back, and handed it to Sirius. Sirius took it and swallowed it as if it was tea, and then abruptly spluttered and choked. He stared at the glass, then said, “What is it? I need it,” and drank before Fleamont could give him an answer.</p><p>“Enhanced brandy,” Fleamont said. He managed to control the urge to shake the answer out of Sirius, but it was difficult. “Will you <em>please </em>tell me exactly what’s got into you? If Lupin didn’t refuse to come with you or say he didn’t want anything to do with you, why isn’t he here?”</p><p>“He’s so ill that he can’t move.”</p><p>Fleamont narrowed his eyes as he stood. “It’s been too many days since the last full moon for that.”</p><p>Sirius choked, but not in a way that said it was the brandy’s fault. He put the glass down on the table next to him and whispered, “It isn’t that. He sought out some kind of experimental ritual to try and cure his lycanthropy. It sickened him. I think his own magic is turning against him.”</p><p>Fleamont wanted to sigh, but that would probably only injure Sirius’s feelings. And he did know the kind of desperation that could drive someone to do that. He had never experienced it himself without coming up with a solution, but he’d felt a shadow of it when he was seeking Harry.</p><p>“All right. Then can you bring him here so that I can see about trying to redirect his magic and save his life?”</p><p>Sirius looked up with damp eyes. “You’d do that?”</p><p>“You’re Harry’s godfather, and Lupin was one of your best friends.” Fleamont considered Sirius for a moment. “I remember the boy when he visited you here a few times after fifth year. I wouldn’t want someone I knew like that to suffer and die when I could prevent it.”</p><p>Sirius sent the brandy flying when he leaped up and wrapped his arms around Fleamont, but the house-elves could clean the carpet.</p><p>*</p><p>“Just a few steps more, Moony, that’s it…”</p><p>Fleamont kept a smile on his face with an effort. Lupin looked truly terrible as he limped up the twisting path to the front door.</p><p>His eyes were sunken in his head, and his skin was grey in a fashion that Fleamont knew was due to more than the full moon; he hadn’t looked like that the one full moon he had spent at Potter Place. His left arm was twisted and seemed to hang like a vine down the side of his body. Now and then he shuddered as if he was either cold or drunk.</p><p>“Just one more step, Moony,” Sirius whispered, and Lupin’s foot slid slowly over the threshold at last.</p><p>A flickering shadow charged past Fleamont even as he was opening his mouth to welcome Lupin. Something reared up and screamed in Lupin’s face, and he stumbled back, eyes wide and shocked, nearly falling before Sirius caught him. Fleamont stared at the shadow-leopard on its hind legs, forepaws braced on either side of the doorframe, growl fading to a deep rumble as Lupin retreated.</p><p>“Monster!” Harry called from behind Fleamont.</p><p>Fleamont turned to frown at his grandson as he ran into the entrance hall, across the black-and-white alternating flagstones. “Harry, what did I tell you about getting control of Monster?”</p><p>“I was trying, Grand.” Harry did huge, injured eyes well, Fleamont had to admit. “But Monster reacted the way he did when that woman in Diagon Alley tried to touch me. He ran away from me, and all I sensed from him was that there was a threat.” He peered around Fleamont to look at Lupin. “Is Mr. Lupin the threat? Why?”</p><p>At least he sounded appropriately horrified, Fleamont thought. Then again, Sirius had frequently told Harry tales of the Marauders, and he had looked forward to meeting another one. “I don’t know. Monster.” He spoke the shadow-leopard’s name firmly, stepping forwards.</p><p>The creature didn’t turn to look at him. Fleamont reached out and tried to cast a Restraining Spell that he had used when James’s unruly Crup puppy had got out of control a few times. But the spell went right through Monster’s head and back, and a second later, so did Fleamont’s hand.</p><p>
  <em>Shadow-leopard. Right. </em>
</p><p>But shadow or not, it was abundantly clear that Remus Lupin wouldn’t be entering the house as long as Monster was on guard.</p><p>Fleamont sighed and stepped around Monster, to face Lupin. “Remus,” he said, with a nod. “What exactly was the content of the ritual that you performed on yourself?”</p><p>Lupin might not have heard him. His heartbroken eyes were locked on Harry and Monster. Then he closed them, but Fleamont had no trouble in remembering what they looked like. He’d had to see them often enough when Lupin visited. “I’m the threat,” he whispered. “You don’t want a werewolf around Harry. I should have known that.”</p><p>“No,” Fleamont said at once. “I had a werewolf over as guest last week, and Monster didn’t react this way.”</p><p>“What werewolf? You didn’t tell me that!”</p><p>Sirius sounded nearly as injured as Harry was probably making his face behind Fleamont. Fleamont shrugged. “You didn’t need to know.” He looked at Lupin again. “I need to know the content of the ritual so that I can eliminate that as a possibility.”</p><p>Lupin swallowed. “The hag I visited infected me with a Blood-Devourer.”</p><p>Fleamont reacted without thinking about it. “You’re an idiot.”</p><p>“Don’t call my friend that!” Sirius bristled the way he did when someone insulted Harry, moving in between Fleamont and Lupin.</p><p>“I’ll call him what he is,” Fleamont said. “And an idiot is far worse than a werewolf.” Lupin was recoiling again, the way he had from Monster. “<em>Why </em>would you allow someone to infect you with a parasite that will eat your magic?”</p><p>“She—she promised that it would cleanse my blood and eat out the curse.” Lupin was trembling, and now his left arm drifted around like a vine again, and Fleamont paid closer attention to it. Yes, the skin was rippling and bobbing as if a swarm of insects was moving about underneath it. “Lycanthropy is a blood-borne curse. It needs someone drawing blood with teeth or claws to spread it, a-and it stays in the blood of someone infected with it. That’s why it transforms me the way it does, because the blood runs all through the body and can affect the whole thing.”</p><p>“All true. None of that excuses your idiocy.”</p><p>Lupin closed his eyes. “I thought it might kill me,” he whispered, “and I considered that an acceptable price to be free of this curse. Or it might eat my magic, and then I could live the rest of my life as a Muggle. I don’t—I <em>hate </em>what I am. Who I am.”</p><p>“Oh, Moony,” Sirius said, and hugged him hard. “I don’t want to lose you this way. Fleamont can fix it, of course.” And he turned around and stared hopefully at Fleamont as if he hadn’t just made an impossible promise on his behalf.</p><p>Fleamont shook his head. “He can’t stay here. Monster is right about the level of threat he poses.”</p><p>“Why?” Sirius moved in front of Lupin as if that might shield him from Fleamont’s sight and change his answer somehow.</p><p>“Because the Blood-Devourer will seek to spread to someone young with powerful magic. And Remus is right about blood being the mechanism of transfer. It’ll compel Lupin to scratch Harry or bite him, or otherwise touch him in some way that involves a little blood being spilled.”</p><p>“I’m not taking him back to Knockturn Alley.”</p><p>“He can stay in one of the buildings on the grounds,” Fleamont said, and stepped out through the door, shutting it firmly behind him. At least Monster should prevent Harry from following. “Obviously, Monster doesn’t object to his presence on the estate, only in the same house as Harry.”</p><p>“You <em>should </em>take me back to Knockturn Alley. Leave me to die, Padfoot.”</p><p>“Do stop the self-pitying monologues, Remus, it will make it considerably easier for me to help you,” Fleamont said briskly as he strode towards the far buildings.</p><p>“How can you help him if the Blood-Devourer makes it hopeless?”</p><p>“I may be able to come up with a solution,” Fleamont said. He didn’t know that for certain—he’d never dealt with the kind of magic that created Blood-Devourers or kept them active in someone’s blood personally—but he knew the adamantine determination rising in himself. That meant he would do what had to be done.</p><p>“Why not now?”</p><p>“I need quiet and <em>time to research, </em>Sirius.”</p><p>Luckily, that at least stopped the whinging from behind him. Fleamont unlocked the door of the nearest building and moved in to look around. Euphemia had once used this place as a storage shed for some of her less delicate Potions ingredients that didn’t need such precisely controlled temperatures as those in the lab or the shelter of thick stone walls.</p><p>Fleamont breathed through the pain that the memories of his wife always brought him and let his eyes range along the inset shelves in the walls, the thick glass vials, the disused cauldrons. Then he nodded and began Transfiguring them into furniture. The largest cauldron became a bed, which Fleamont managed to add springs to after a short struggle of finding the softest places in the metal. Then he picked up the glass vials and transformed them into blankets. For whatever reason, he’d always done well with Transfiguring glass to cloth.</p><p>When he turned around again, Lupin was eyeing the bed longingly, but he cleared his throat. “I don’t need a place as fine as this, Mr. Potter.”</p><p>“I’d hope that you’d listen to me about what I want to provide.”</p><p>Fleamont wasn’t sure what expression rested on his face at the moment, but Lupin glanced at the floor like a submissive dog instead of challenging him. “Of course, Mr. Potter. Thank you.”</p><p>“I’ll also get some food out here so that you can cook if you want,” Fleamont continued, altering the configuration of the wall with the shelves so that a small counter stuck out of it instead. “Or I can have our house-elves prepare meals for you if you’d prefer that.”</p><p>“I think meals prepared by the house-elves might be best. There’s no telling what kind of contamination I might spread around if I cut myself with a knife while I was chopping up ingredients. And you said the Blood-Devourer might compel me to do that?”</p><p>“It could,” Fleamont agreed with a nod. “I appreciate that you’re willing to take precautions to spare my grandson as much as possible, Remus.”</p><p>“I was willing to die so that other people didn’t.” Lupin sank down in the middle of the bed, and Fleamont Transfigured a few pillows. “How could I possibly expose him to danger?”</p><p>Fleamont nodded again, made a few more minutes of small talk, and then left the building. He was walking towards the house with the adamantine wall building in his mind again when Sirius caught up with him.</p><p>“I hope that you don’t plan to bar him from the house indefinitely.”</p><p>“Monster won’t let him in unless Harry’s outside, and it won’t let him near Harry at all. That’s as good a demonstration as any of the danger your friend could be to my grandson.”</p><p>Sirius caught Fleamont’s arm, pulling him to a halt. Fleamont sighed and faced him. He’d had to learn to subdue the reflexes that once had won him duels around Sirius and Harry, but this was the closest that he’d come to pulling his wand in some time. He was more on edge about Remus Lupin being infected with a deadly parasite around Harry than he’d believed. And the protections that he’d woven around Harry might not be able to cope with it.</p><p>“He’s my last friend,” Sirius whispered. “The last of the Marauders. I want him to live with us, to—be part of Harry’s life.”</p><p>“Then I’m going to have to remove the parasite from him.”</p><p>“I thought that couldn’t be done.”</p><p>“I’m going to do it.” Fleamont walked towards the house again, and found Monster and Harry waiting for him in the doorway. “I’m not going to let anything endanger Harry.”</p><p>“Will Mr. Lupin be okay?”</p><p>Harry’s face was turned up to him as Fleamont came through the door, and Fleamont ruffled his hair gently. Harry leaned against his leg. He was taller now than he had been. The result of good nutrition and some potions that he would probably have to take for a few years.</p><p>Fleamont was not going to lose him, and he was not going to disappoint him. He would cure the Blood-Devourer.</p><p>And just because it hadn’t been done before didn’t mean that it couldn’t be done. It meant that the people who had come before him had not been sufficiently determined.</p><p>
  <em>Perhaps I can’t fault them for it. None of them were Potters.</em>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“What are you researching, Grand?”</p><p>Fleamont smiled over his shoulder at Harry as he entered the potions lab. He was far from the most dangerous stage of his research when he would likely need to lock the door. “A way to destroy the Blood-Devourer that Mr. Lupin has.”</p><p>“Oh.” Harry stood and watched his bubbling cauldron, which currently held a sample of Lupin’s blood in contact with a puddle of mercury. Fleamont had passed environmental wards around the lip of the cauldron that would keep the toxic fumes away from him.</p><p>“Grand, I wanted to know something.”</p><p>“Yes, Harry?” So far, Harry had shown no great interest in Potions over any other aspect of the art, but neither had James at his age. And Fleamont was happy enough to take an apprentice from another family when the time came to pass on the Potter knowledge, if Harry wanted to do something else.</p><p>“Can you get rid of Monster? I mean, not permanently. Just for a while. But I want to visit with Mr. Lupin, and Monster won’t let me.”</p><p>Fleamont glanced towards the door of the lab, a gigantic stone panel set in the middle of an even bigger stone archway, and saw the flickering shadow that lurked there. He had no doubt that Monster would already be in the room if there was a clear danger, like the environmental ward being missing from around the cauldron. “No, Harry. Monster is permanently attached to you. And you know that Mr. Lupin is in a very dangerous condition at the moment.”</p><p>“But werewolves <em>aren’t </em>dangerous. Sirius said.”</p><p>“They aren’t evil people,” Fleamont told Harry quietly. “But they can be dangerous if they don’t have the Wolfsbane potion on the night of the full moon. And I explained to you about the Blood-Devourer. When I’ve cleansed it, then you can play with Mr. Lupin all you like.”</p><p>Harry stared up at him with his lip quivering. “I want to play with Mr. Lupin <em>now</em>.”</p><p>“Whinging doesn’t get you what you want.” Fleamont glanced into the cauldron, and sighed. The liquid at the bottom was all the dark, swirling red that indicated the Blood-Devourer had won again, eating the mercury. No, that wouldn’t be the basis of his cure. And he’d had moderately high hopes considering how toxic quicksilver was.</p><p>“But I <em>wanna.</em>”</p><p>“It doesn’t matter. It’s too dangerous.” Fleamont ended the environmental ward and Vanished the sludge at the bottom of the cauldron with a wave of his wand.</p><p>“<em>Fine! </em>You don’t care about me <em>or </em>about Mr. Lupin!”</p><p>“I think you should go to your room for a little while, Harry,” Fleamont said, with a shake of his head. “Maybe then you can listen to yourself and realize how ridiculous you’re being.”</p><p>Harry ran away, not crying, but making loud gulping noises that were the purest sounds of frustration Fleamont had ever heard. Monster followed him.</p><p>Fleamont sighed and stared into the cauldron. This kind of experimentation wasn’t getting him far, and probably wouldn’t unless he could speak to the hag who had given Lupin the Blood-Devourer directly. He would have to ask Lupin for directions, and then he would have to venture into Knockturn Alley.</p><p>Not something he wanted to do. But even less did he want to have Lupin die on his watch, which would distress both Harry and Sirius. Fleamont would do a great deal to prevent distress from coming to his grandson.</p><p>*</p><p>Knockturn Alley hadn’t greatly changed from the last time that Fleamont had ventured down it, before he went into the years-long coma from the potion his wife had given him. He kept his hood up and walked with a calm, determined stride, the sort that ought to signal to the other inhabitants of the Alley that he was no one to mess with.</p><p><em>Ought </em>to. Fleamont had to conceal an impatient sigh when the shadows moved in front of him and two warlocks stepped out. They limped towards him, both hunch-backed and with long fingernails that more resembled claws. Fleamont watched them, but listened behind him, and was rewarded with the scraping sounds of someone moving in.</p><p>“Got a few Galleons, wizard?” whined the nearest warlock. He held out his filthy hand.</p><p>Fleamont nodded and acted as if he was fumbling with his purse, then turned and abruptly loosed a Bone-Breaking Curse at the third moving in behind him. It turned out to be a man who had every sign of having spent too much time in either his werewolf or his Animagus form: shaggy hair hanging down his shoulders, nails even more claw-like than those of his companions, fang-like teeth. The man screamed as Fleamont’s curse took him across the face and broke his nose and cheekbones.</p><p>While he was reeling backwards, Fleamont had already turned to face the two warlocks. He didn’t waste his breath on blaming or curses. He simply waited, and the miserable creatures shifted backwards with their hands raised.</p><p>“We didn’t mean any harm….” The one who had begged for money seemed to realize that it was useless saying that, and grabbed his standing comrade’s arm and retreated. Fleamont walked on. Perhaps people would come to strip the animalistic man of his money and possessions, but that wasn’t Fleamont’s problem.</p><p>Lupin had said that the hag who had given him the Blood-Devourer dwelt in a hovel at the end of a twisted little street entering the alley that most people used as a place to relieve their bowels. Fleamont had already wrapped a Scent-Muting Charm around his nose and mouth in anticipation, and was glad when he saw the runnels of orange and brown in the street in front of him. Concealing—well, sort of—his grimace, Fleamont stepped forwards and rapped smartly on the hanging door of the hovel.</p><p>It trembled in place, and a distant charm rang a bell with a sound like bronze. Fleamont kept his senses, minus his sense of smell, focused all around him. It took perhaps three minutes for the hag to come and draw the door, which clung to a few twists of rope, aside and stare out at him. Fleamont silently extended his hand. A few Galleons gleamed there.</p><p>The hag licked her lips. They were blue, and so was the remnant of hair that clung around her face and neck. “Who’s coming to ask for Helga, then?” she asked, craning her neck downwards and fluttering her eyes at him.</p><p>“No names,” Fleamont said. “Do you want the money or not?”</p><p>Helga sighed, as if he had disappointed her greatly by refusing to play her little game, and shot her hand out to scoop up the coins. “Come in, wizard.”</p><p>The inside of the hovel was dark enough to make Fleamont want to cast a <em>Lumos </em>Charm, but he refrained. He couldn’t show weakness in front of someone ruthless and well-connected enough to introduce a Blood-Devourer to someone’s body. He did see a few piles of what looked like cloth before Helga stepped past him and sat down on the other side of what someone could have called, with a bit of straining and a refusal to use words like “rubbish heap,” a desk.</p><p>“What have you come for, wizard?” Her voice was brisker now, making Fleamont hope that this could be accomplished with a minimum of fuss.</p><p>He said, “Five weeks ago, you put a Blood-Devourer in the blood of a werewolf who wanted to be cured of his affliction. I want to know where it came from and how I can cure it.”</p><p>For a moment, Helga’s mouth hung open, although Fleamont couldn’t tell what had surprised her, the question or that someone might want to <em>cure </em>a person with lycanthropy. Then she began to laugh, a wheezing noise that echoed all around the hovel and probably for a good way outside it.</p><p>“There’s no way to remove a Blood-Devourer from a victim!” she crowed. “You know that.”</p><p>“You told him it would cure his lycanthropy.”</p><p>“Before he dies, it will be gone, yes.”</p><p>Fleamont nodded. He had expected something like that, considering. “Then I want to know where you got it and how you put it into him.” He didn’t know enough about Blood-Devourers to be sure, although he expected few surprises in the answers she gave him.</p><p>“No.” Helga stood up with her hands somewhere in the vicinity of her hips, although it was dark enough in the space that it was hard to be sure. “A hag doesn’t reveal her secrets. He didn’t ask about them before he accepted the Devourer into his blood. Maybe I’d answer the questions if it was here. He’s not. Go away, wizard.”</p><p>Fleamont half-shrugged. Lupin had offered to accompany him, but Fleamont hadn’t seen the point. The man stood a chance of infecting him or someone else as he got to the point of being eaten where he would be desperate to do so, and besides, for all that he had lived in darkness and squalor for years, Lupin was soft-hearted. He would object to the techniques that Fleamont had always intended to employ if he didn’t get his way.</p><p>“You’ll answer one way or the other,” he said, and let his wand take on a soft green glow. It had little connection to the spells he was prepared to cast, but it frightened many people, since the color resembled the Killing Curse.</p><p>Helga cackled. “I’ve been frightened by worse than you! You won’t get it out of me. My secrets are protected by the Crystalline Mind.”</p><p>It was a sub-discipline of Occlumency that presented crystalline walls in the mind to everyone who might try to look in. Fleamont had expected something like that. Hags and warlocks were those who couldn’t use wand magic, but there was nothing preventing them from excelling in arts that didn’t need one.</p><p>“Then I’ll break it,” he said. “Or you can tell me willingly.”</p><p>“You can’t <em>break </em>the Crystalline Mind, wizard. There’s nothing known that can break it.”</p><p>“Enough pain can.”</p><p>Helga cackled again. “You think ones who walk in the Light have the stomach for <em>that</em>?” She tilted her head. “Enough bravery to walk into the darkness, though. Maybe I’ll keep you for a pet. That might be fun.”</p><p>Fleamont didn’t bother speaking an incantation. There was nothing that would serve his purpose in the usual repertoire of pain spells. The Cruciatus stood more a chance of breaking the mind than spilling someone’s secrets, and hags might have resistance to other, lesser ones. They tended to practice magic that used their own blood and agony.</p><p>So Fleamont simply struck her with his will channeled through his wand. He struck her with pure determination, the power that had let him sacrifice Peter Pettigrew’s soul to gain extra protection for Harry, and the rage that had made the Potters feared for generations.</p><p>For a moment, Helga wavered. Then she screamed. Fleamont ignored the prickling unease up his spine that said he should put up a Silencing Charm. This was Knockturn Alley. No one would come to investigate the work of a superior predator.</p><p>Helga tried to put her hands over her eyes, but she couldn’t move. The agony flowing through her body came solely from her mind. Fleamont yanked and jerked on her thoughts and the magic that guarded them, warping, hammering, cracking them. He was aware of something cold and hard trying to resist him, the Crystalline Mind, but he ignored it.</p><p>If he had even wanted to falter, an image of Harry would have been all he needed to keep going. Harry deserved to have one of his father’s best friends back. He deserved to have all the gifts that he had grown up without, and if Fleamont had to kill or torture for him to have that, then that was what he’d done.</p><p>Long before Fleamont had thought it might happen, Helga was cowering in front of him, babbling out her secrets. It seemed that perhaps she’d practiced less blood and pain magic than some other hags, leaving her less resistant. Fleamont stood and listened.</p><p>“—got the Blood-Devourer from a pot of them smuggled into the country! I don’t know who brought them! No one does!” Helga took a breath that bubbled in her lungs and then babbled on as fast as she could. “I prepared a potion with the Devourer in it and he swallowed it. No way to resist the blood corruption. It spreads all through the blood. There’s not a part of his body untouched by it. The best thing you can do is kill him before he spreads it.”</p><p>“What would happen to his organs if the infection could be cleared?”</p><p>“Aren’t you <em>listening </em>to me?” Helga tossed back her head and gasped again. “There’s no way to clear it! The blood by now is completely corrupted, turning into a stew that will kill him in a few more weeks! The organs could heal if you could somehow introduce clean blood all at once, but there’s no way to do that.”</p><p>“Do the organs that could heal include the brain? The heart? The kidneys? Everything vital?”</p><p>Helga stared at Fleamont with her mouth slightly open. “Are you listening to me, wizard?”</p><p>Fleamont raised his wand again.</p><p>“Yes!” Helga blurted. “The theory is that the infection is entirely blood-borne and won’t linger. That’s why it’s called a <em>Blood-</em>Devourer and not an Organ-Devourer. It replaces the blood with itself and its juices. But no one’s ever been healed from one of those. He was an idiot to request it.”</p><p>Fleamont privately agreed, but there was no sense in saying that, and he had one more question to ask. “And your knowledge of blood tells you that the lycanthropy curse is blood-borne as well? That’s why you could technically keep your word and tell him the Blood-Devourer would eat his disease?”</p><p>“Yes. That’s been established knowledge about the werewolf curse for decades. It’s why their whole bodies can transform, with the blood surging through every single part.”</p><p>Fleamont had already known that, but it was nice to have it confirmed through the word of someone more knowledgeable about blood magic than he was. He waved his wand, withdrawing his will from Helga at the same time. In truth, he didn’t need the wand gesture, but it was a good outer indication of his inner thoughts, and that way, fewer people would be able to guess that this wasn’t a spell.</p><p>Helga lay there, still sobbing. Fleamont nodded to her and started to walk towards the door, such as it was.</p><p>“You’ll never do it,” said Helga’s dull voice from behind him. “The Blood-Devourer is a death curse, just a slow one. You can’t remove the blood without killing him. You can’t cleanse it from the blood because soon there’ll be nothing left anymore, just it.”</p><p>Fleamont didn’t see why he should dignify that with an answer. He stepped out into the little alley and walked back up it, absently avoiding the urine and feces, while his mind revolved on what he would need. By the time he reached the entrance of Knockturn Alley, he’d made a full list for himself of rare Potions ingredients, as well as the spell that he would need to look up and study very carefully before he used it.</p><p>And there was another requirement. He would need to brew two potions at the exact same time, with one ending a moment before the other—both complicated potions that he couldn’t rely on Sirius for, and certainly not Harry. Lupin might want to help, but his self-doubt would cripple him even if he had good Potions skills, something Fleamont wasn’t certain of.</p><p>He needed a second pair of expert hands, a second Potions brewer of the highest quality.</p><p>Fleamont caught himself smiling, a smile that made a few people back carefully out of the way, as he strode to the Apparition point. Well, Severus Snape <em>had </em>said that he might like to visit sometime in the future.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This is the end of this story, but I will continue the series, probably with my next series of seasonal fics.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“No. Not him. Anyone but him.”</p><p>Fleamont nodded to Snape as the house-elf took his cloak, and glanced over his shoulder at Sirius. “Do you want your friend to get better or not?”</p><p>Sirius shut his mouth with a snap and looked away sullenly. Fleamont had been relentless with him since he had sent the owl to Snape and received an affirmative reply. He’d told Sirius the truth, told him that there was no way for Lupin to survive without a second Potions expert, and that Snape was his choice. Secrets already bound them, secrets that would work better to guarantee Harry’s safety during the process than any amount of Galleons.</p><p>Sirius had blurted out the whole sorry tale of how he and Lupin had nearly killed Snape during their fifth year, but Fleamont had just nodded. That was actually another security; Snape would welcome either a means of paying back the debt or a chance to have his two would-be murderers in <em>his </em>debt.</p><p>“Fine,” Sirius said, and slouched out of the room.</p><p>“Is he going to be a problem?” Snape’s eyes were dark as he watched Sirius go.</p><p>Fleamont shook his head. “No more than my grandson. Both of them know to stay out of the potions lab, and I have wards up that will prevent the fumes from leaking out and making them dizzy or sick.” He nodded towards the lab. “Let’s enter, and you can tell me if it’s up to your standards or if you need something else.”</p><p>Snape gave him one more suspicious look and then a stiff nod, apparently taking the word of a Potter as it was for once. He walked around the lab with a slow step, his frown increasing as he peered at the cauldrons and the shelves and the vials and the ingredients that Fleamont had waiting, but he made only one specific suggestion when he had come to the end of that walk.</p><p>“You will have to add a crystal cauldron.”</p><p>“Damn,” Fleamont said softly, the reason why unfolding in his head like the wings of a butterfly. Crystal would chill and slow the first potion that he needed until it was ready, the moment before the other one. “You’re right.” He turned and scribbled down a note to himself so he wouldn’t forget.</p><p>“How great is your skill?”</p><p>Fleamont glanced at him, then flicked his wand. The wall that separated the lab from the library thinned and vanished for a moment, and Fleamont nodded to the nearest shelf, covered with his hand-bound journals. “I filled those with my notes from the time I left Hogwarts to the time I was in my thirties. The ones on the other side are from my thirties to my sixties.”</p><p>Snape was quiet for a moment as Fleamont let the wall come back. “Name one potion you invented beyond that silly hair potion.”</p><p>Fleamont smiled a little. “The Blood-Replenisher.”</p><p>“But.” Snape appeared on the verge of stuttering for a moment, and then drew himself up. “That was invented by Master Tielhard of the Guild of Potioneers centuries ago.”</p><p>Fleamont shook his head. “The reference to the potion in older books is to one that would <em>thicken </em>the blood, make it less likely to bleed out completely when someone had a wound. That was usually given to hemophiliacs. I invented the kind that would introduce new blood into the body.” He looked at the cauldrons. “I’ve unfortunately never tried to clean up after a Blood-Devourer, but what expertise I do have should give us somewhat of an advantage.”</p><p>“Why are you not as famous for that as you are for the hair potion?”</p><p>Fleamont snorted. “The hair potion was one that would make me money without people deciding I was selfish to keep the secret of brewing it for myself. The Blood-Replenisher is an essential health potion. I would have been an object of suspicion and envy if I hadn’t told others how to brew it, so I released the recipe.”</p><p>Snape appeared to be listening to something other than his voice for a moment. Then he nodded .”You know that I’m the one who spread the prophecy about your grandson to the enemy. The Dark Lord.”</p><p>Fleamont held his breath for a moment, then nodded back. “I was aware. I didn’t expect you to admit it.” Dumbledore’s mind had been a treasure trove of information, now that Fleamont was holding him on a magical leash.</p><p>“Why are you working with me? Why are you allowing me to be around <em>her </em>child, when I’m guilty of that?”</p><p>Fleamont stared into Snape’s black eyes and decided they would have to get past this crisis before the man would be of use to him in brewing. “Several reasons. First, I do have need of your expertise. Second, you’re a much better choice than other people who might try to spread the secret around, because you’re already bound to me by the secret of the Dursleys’ murder and your own feelings for Lily. Third, because I wanted you to see the protections around Harry so that you know if you attempt to harm him again, you’ll die.”</p><p>“You’ll kill me if you perceive me as a threat to him. You would already have killed me, or done whatever you’ve done to Dumbledore.”</p><p>Fleamont concealed a frown. He didn’t want Dumbledore’s changed behavior making other people look in his direction. He would have to question Snape on what he had noticed, and whether it would be visible to other people who hadn’t been as close to the Headmaster. “Yes, I would have.”</p><p>“But instead of a threat, I’m—”</p><p>“An asset who could also be a threat. Much the way I view Remus Lupin.” Fleamont chuckled at seeing the disgusted expression that crossed Snape’s face. “Come, being compared to the werewolf we’re going to cure shouldn’t be such a terrible experience.”</p><p>“Cure.” Snape frowned at him again and looked around the lab. “No one has managed to cure lycanthropy despite centuries of trying.”</p><p>“Perhaps they were not who we are.”</p><p>*</p><p>“Grand?”</p><p>Fleamont opened his eyes with a small yawn. He’d fallen asleep in the lab last night, watching over one of the first stages of the potion that would have to be completed first. He turned and smiled at Harry as he came up to the warded door of the lab, Monster pacing behind him. “Hullo, Harry. I’ll join you at breakfast in a moment.”</p><p>“Grand, who’s the scary man?”</p><p>For a moment, Fleamont thought Remus had somehow got into the house, but then Harry would have been talking about the dead man, either from Monster’s claws or from the wards Fleamont had set up to react to the presence of a Blood-Devourer. He stood up. “His name is Severus Snape. He came with me when we took you from the Muggles. He was a friend of your mother’s.” <em>And an enemy of your father’s. </em>But honestly, Fleamont didn’t see the need to mention that.</p><p>Harry nibbled his lip. “He said I had my mum’s eyes.”</p><p>“You do.” Fleamont stepped out of the lab and secured the wards with a flick of his wrist just to make sure that they would stand up to repeated magical poking should Harry or Sirius get curious. “I can only tell you a little about her. I’m sorry. Sirius is the one who knows most.”</p><p>“Would the scary man know more?”’</p><p>“You should call him Mr. Snape, Harry. You wouldn’t want someone to go around calling you the Boy-Who-Lived, after all.”</p><p>Harry made a face. He did hate that. “All right,” he said. “But would he know more?”</p><p>“He might. I don’t know if he would want to share the stories. But you can ask him.”</p><p>“Thanks, Grand.” Harry ran ahead of him down the corridor for a second, Monster traveling up the wall like an extension of Harry’s own shadow. But before they entered the dining room, Harry paused and turned back with a solemn face. “Are you going to cure Mr. Lupin?”</p><p>“We’re trying. It’s part of the reason Mr. Snape is here.”</p><p>“He—Sirius said that he visited Mr. Lupin in the storage shed yesterday, and Mr. Lupin thinks he’s going to die and shouldn’t be cured. He said that maybe it would be better for everyone if he died.”</p><p>Fleamont half-closed his eyes. Yes, it was a good thing that he hadn’t wasted time trying to find out what Lupin’s brewing skills were like. “Well, we’re going to try, Harry. What Mr. Lupin thinks about it is—not irrelevant, but we’re not going to leave him to die just because he wants to.”</p><p>“Why would he want to die, Grand?” Harry stopped with his hand on the doorknob of the dining room. “I never wanted to die. Even when I lived with the horrible Muggles, I just wanted someone to come and rescue me from them.”</p><p>Fleamont knelt down in front of Harry, gently touching his cheek. “Some people get so sad and sick and upset that they can’t see any other way out of their situation, Harry. Mr. Lupin has gone most of his life thinking that he has to suffer from being a werewolf and that he can’t have friends or live a good life because of it. You have to make some allowances for that. But he’s not going to just die.”</p><p>Harry chewed his lip hard enough to make it look like he was pain, but he nodded and opened the door. “Okay.”</p><p>Snape was seated on the other side of the dining room table from Sirius, who was glaring at him. But Snape only had eyes for Harry as he walked in and sat down in his usual chair. Harry smiled at him a little and then glanced away.</p><p>“Will you tell me about my mum?”</p><p>Sirius opened his mouth, then closed it again, although that was because Fleamont was glaring at him over Harry’s head. Snape, meanwhile, nodded and made a noise as if he was swallowing down shards of broken glass.</p><p>“Yes, Mr. Potter, I will.”</p><p>*</p><p>“I thought Monster wouldn’t let me in the house. But I have to be in the house for the final stages of the cleansing?”</p><p>Lupin’s face was more sunken than ever, and most of his visible skin had turned grey. Fleamont held his gaze as he waved his wand in a spell that made Lupin’s skin turn translucent. It looked like the Blood-Devourer wasn’t progressing any faster. Lupin must be in horrendous pain, but he bore it without compliant, which was at least one admirable trait. “When that time comes, Monster and Harry and Sirius will be in another house entirely.”</p><p>Lupin lowered his head and mumbled something Fleamont couldn’t hear. Fleamont holstered his wand and raised an eyebrow. “What?”</p><p>“I don’t know why you would ever allow me in Harry’s life at all. I should have refused to listen to Sirius when he found me in Knockturn Alley. I should have refused to come here and endanger Harry.”</p><p>“I am now confident that I can find a cure for your Blood-Devourer crisis.” Fleamont folded his arms and stared down at Lupin’s bowed head. “However, I will require you to find a cure for this as well.”</p><p>“What do you mean?”</p><p>“Your addiction to self-loathing.”</p><p>Lupin recoiled away from him on the bed. “You don’t—you don’t know how hard it’s been—”</p><p>“I know a few werewolves, although admittedly many of them have more money than you do.” Fleamont watched Lupin’s left hand, which was creeping along the side of the bed towards him like a vine. “But what worries me more is that you simply collapse into helplessness and idiocy, the way you did when you thought the Blood-Devourer a <em>cure. </em>I had to explain your suicidal impulses to Harry the other day. I would appreciate not having to do that again.”</p><p>“I—no one would give me Mind-Healing because—”</p><p>“I know. But you won’t have that obstacle any more after we clean the Blood-Devourer out of you. I want you to promise me that you’ll go to Mind-Healing, and that you’ll do your best not to make Harry worry that you’re going to kill yourself.”</p><p>Lupin looked away from him. “The legacy of those years as a werewolf is going to be very hard to live with, even if I’m completely cured,” he whispered.</p><p>Fleamont nodded. He actually respected Lupin more for not saying that he would be consumed by joy if he was completely cured of his lycanthropy. He knew himself well enough to realize that wasn’t true. “I know. But you’ll still need Mind-Healing.”</p><p>Lupin fidgeted on the bed. “I don’t want pity.”</p><p>“Then go to a Mind-Healer,” Fleamont said coldly. “Because, I promise, if you remain here and act as you have been, pity is all you’re ever going to <em>get.</em>”</p><p>*</p><p>“And this—will work?”</p><p>Fleamont glanced up from the spellbook he’d been reading. Snape was staring at the crystal cauldron that glimmered and roiled gently with the Stasis Potion he’d just added more powdered <em>Amanita </em>to. It looked like grey sludge, though Fleamont knew it would be as crystal as the cauldron by the end of the final stage.</p><p>“Yes,” Fleamont said, snapping his book shut. He needed to practice the wand movements and incantations now, and reading about it would do him no more good. “I know of no other reason why it should not. Do you?”</p><p>“No. Reading about the theory makes it sound…sound.” Snape’s lips crimped as if he despised himself for his involuntary pun. “I simply wonder why, if it can be worked out this way, no one ever tried it before to cure a werewolf.”</p><p>Fleamont shrugged. “Probably no one had the combination of sympathy for a werewolf, a werewolf with a <em>different </em>deadly blood-borne disease, and the Potions skills that we do before. After all, my spell is hardly one that you would usually cast if you had sympathy for a werewolf.”</p><p>“Or anyone,” Snape said, eyeing him sideways.</p><p>Fleamont raised his eyebrows. “Are you surprised to find me casting Dark Arts? I believe that your impression of the Potter family as one that takes care of itself is one that you must have had confirmed numerous times by my son.”</p><p>Snape sneered. “All James Potter cared for when I knew him was himself.”</p><p>Fleamont nodded, unsurprised. “He was a spoiled adolescent. He was born long after Euphemia and I had given up thinking we would have children.” Sadness blew through him like a gentle breeze at the thought of Euphemia. He glanced again at his own cauldron and noticed the sullen red glow coming from it. He went over and added more marigold petals, shredding them in with the ease of long practice. “Not that that excuses some of the actions he must have taken, but I would have protected him in the same way.”</p><p>“He never used Dark Arts that I knew of. He despised me for doing so.”</p><p>Fleamont shook his head. “He wasn’t going to use them in front of you, perhaps, but he did use them. I suspect that some of the protections on the house in Godric’s Hollow were Dark Arts.”</p><p>“You couldn’t check?” Snape’s left hand clenched and wrung. Fleamont suspected the Mark on the arm was bothering him.</p><p>“By the time I got there, six years had passed. There were no traces recent enough to check.”</p><p>Snape closed his eyes and nodded. Then he faced the cauldrons again. “Perhaps two more days, and they should be ready.”</p><p>“Yes,” Fleamont said, and returned to shredding marigold petals. If this was the end of the heart-to-heart conversations he had with Snape, he wouldn’t be displeased.</p><p>*</p><p>“What you want to do is insane.”</p><p>Fleamont studied Sirius, more worried about his low, thick tone of voice than he would have been if Sirius was screaming and shouting. “I explained to you how this is going to work, Sirius. We have no other choice if we want to save Remus. Otherwise, he’ll simply have toxic sludge for blood, and die within a week. I’ve left it as long as I could to give the potions time to mature, and to see if there was some problem with the solution that would come to my attention. Nothing has.”</p><p>“Yeah, everything’s fine.” Sirius stood up, trembling. They were in the sitting room where Fleamont and Harry had been when Sirius burst in to give them the news about Lupin, but Sirius hadn’t removed his eyes from Fleamont. “Except for the part where you’re going to <em>kill my best friend.</em>”</p><p>“I thought James was your best friend.”</p><p>Sirius flinched and turned away to stare out the window. There was a fine evening out there, with only a light rain and plenty of moonbeams, but Sirius wrapped his arms around himself as though he was back in Azkaban. “Don’t throw that in my face.”</p><p>“Then don’t act as though I’m killing Remus, Sirius. You know very well I’m doing no such thing.”</p><p>“There has to be something else we could do.”</p><p>“Perhaps he could have simply lived as a normal werewolf with your company on full moon nights if he hadn’t been so <em>stupid </em>as to get himself infected with a Blood-Devourer.”</p><p>“It wasn’t stupidity! It was desperation!”</p><p>“Then believe that this is as well,” Fleamont snapped. “I wouldn’t do it if I thought it couldn’t work, Sirius. And I wouldn’t do it if Remus was someone random. But he’s your friend, and he’s someone who could be an important person in Harry’s life.”</p><p>Sirius blinked and turned around. “You know, I don’t believe that?”</p><p>“That he could be an important person in Harry’s life?” Fleamont arched his eyebrows. “Well, you know your own friend best, but I did think—”</p><p>“That you’re doing it for that reason.” Sirius folded his arms. “I think you’re doing it for Harry, not me, and because Remus is dangerous as he is now. You’re afraid that Harry might somehow get around Monster, or Remus would find a way to scratch him. You wouldn’t care at all if Remus was my friend but didn’t want to be a sort of honorary uncle to Harry.”</p><p>Fleamont waited a moment, to see if anything else would come out, and then nodded. “You’re right. I wouldn’t.”</p><p>“What happened to <em>compassion</em>? What happened to—”</p><p>Fleamont laughed, and Sirius shut up, with a flinch that was subtle but which Fleamont had no trouble seeing. “Yes, of course, bemoan the disappearance of virtues that you never practiced yourself, Sirius,” he said. “You certainly never bestowed compassion on anyone at Hogwarts who wasn’t a friend of yours, or anyone doing something you disapproved of. My son was the same way for too many years. But he didn’t know it, and when he did realize it, he grew up. I, on the other hand, have never pretended to be anything other than what I am. I don’t love anyone other than my grandson, and those who want to come near him come under my protection, but it’s for Harry’s sake, not because I’m some benevolent charity.”</p><p>“You don’t feel <em>anything </em>for the burden Remus lived with for so many years?”</p><p>“Not when it’s combined with his cowardice.”</p><p>Sirius didn’t seem to know what to say to that. Fleamont turned away.</p><p>*</p><p>“You can’t really be ready,” Lupin whispered.</p><p>Fleamont closed his eyes, concentrating on the movements of the spell and the sound of the second potion within its cauldron. It was rose-red now, but swelling closer and closer to the true crimson that it needed to be. He could hear Snape shifting his balance near his own cauldron, the one that would create the stasis.</p><p>“Where are Sirius and Harry?”</p><p>“Elsewhere,” Fleamont murmured. “You don’t need to concern yourself with them.” He had sent them to Godric’s Hollow, and placed a ward on Sirius that would make it impossible for him to Apparate back to Potter Place or cross the boundaries of the grounds in his Animagus form. Sirius didn’t need to know it was there unless he tried to sneak back. Fleamont hoped he wouldn’t have to contend with it.</p><p>“I wish they could be here.”</p><p>“Shut up, Lupin, for the love of Merlin,” Snape snarled.</p><p>Fleamont opened his eyes. The half-full moon was shining in through the window. The first cauldron gleamed with crystal, the second perfect blood-red.</p><p>It was time.</p><p>Fleamont whipped in a complete circle, seeing, from the corner of his eye, Snape floating his own cauldron with the crystal potion into the air. Fleamont’s wand danced at ease in his hands, and he roared, “<em>Exsanguinere!</em>”</p><p>As his wand came down, all the blood burst out of Remus Lupin’s body in a cloud of glittering red mist.</p><p>Snape’s glittering crystal potion draped Lupin’s body in a waterfall less than a second later.</p><p>Lupin froze, in agony and screaming and dying and everything else. Fleamont stepped back with a long breath and then turned to face the ball of red in the air that held the Blood-Devourer. He lifted his wand and said softly, “<em>Obcido.</em>”</p><p>There was a long screaming moment when the ball seemed to be trying to head towards him, or towards Snape, but the spell gripped it and choked it and crumpled up in a great grey fist, and then the blood and the Blood-Devourer were gone.</p><p>Fleamont faced his own cauldron and conducted his potion into the air with careful flips of his wand. He could see Snape watching him avidly. Probably taking notes in his head, Fleamont thought. Well, if he ever did this in the future, or something similar, he would want to know how to do it.</p><p>Fleamont arranged the blood around the crystal potion containing Lupin and took a moment to rest. Then he nodded to Snape.</p><p>Snape said a single, flat, “<em>Finite</em>,” and the crystal potion melted away and released Lupin. And Fleamont slammed the Blood Replacement Potion into him before he could die from lack of blood.</p><p>Lupin screamed and screamed. Fleamont had expected that, and it was another reason to be glad that he had sent Sirius and Harry away. He watched coolly, aware that Snape was throwing up at his side, as the blood sped through Lupin’s body, catching up his organs, curling around his brain, interacting with his heart and lungs.</p><p>Lupin almost died three times, twice from his heart stopping and once because all his veins tried to collapse and force the blood back out. Fleamont ruthlessly started his heart again, and forced the Blood Replacement Potion back in, and cast healing charms in a battle with the deep exhaustion he could feel creeping up in him.</p><p>It didn’t matter. He refused to give in to it, the same way that he refused to let Lupin die.</p><p>At last, Lupin lay on the floor, breathing on his own, his eyes still shut. Fleamont hit him with a monitoring charm that would tell him if Lupin started to die again, and one that would keep his bodily processes going until Fleamont could respond to the charm, one sometimes used to keep Dementor victims alive after the shock of the Kiss. Then he fell back on the couch and stared out the window.</p><p>There was no longer a moon visible there.</p><p>Snape cleared his throat. “Do you want me to cast the Diagnostic Charm?”</p><p>Fleamont nodded. He was no longer capable of it, and suspected Snape knew that, but from the cautious look he gave Fleamont as he drew his own wand, the bastard wouldn’t take advantage of it. He had to know that Fleamont’s revenge would be far worse than any minute satisfaction he might get in striking back at a Potter.</p><p>The diagnostic washed from Snape’s wand and across Lupin like a soft wave of blue light. And it remained blue, tracing the length of Lupin’s body and fading from sight.</p><p>“Merlin,” Snape said simply.</p><p>Lupin registered as completely human. He was no longer a werewolf.</p><p>*</p><p>“I am going to leave Britain tomorrow.”</p><p>Fleamont nodded without taking his eyes from the window. On the wide grounds, Lupin was teaching Harry simple spells that involved protection from Dark creatures. Monster lounged next to the foot of Lupin’s chair, completely unconcerned. Sirius was watching them both with a grin that seemed likely to connect with itself on the other side of his head. “You must do as you think best.”</p><p>“Would I be—allowed to return again?”</p><p>Fleamont glanced over his shoulder. “As long as you can do so safely and with no intent to harm Harry. Come and visit him and tell him stories of his mother.”</p><p>“I meant,” Snape said, and stared out the window himself for a moment, “to collaborate on a cure for lycanthropy.”</p><p>Fleamont turned slowly. Snape had his hands clenched on top of each other, his head bowed so that it would have been hard to meet his eyes even if he was inclined to let that happen. Fleamont considered him long enough for Snape’s shoulders to tense.</p><p>But Fleamont only said, “I had not anticipated you would want to do such a thing. I was led to believe that you hated werewolves in general, not just Remus Lupin.”</p><p>For a moment, Snape’s head jerked up, as though he was about to spit some insult. Then he stared at the floor and said, “The reasons I had to hate him have changed. And he has become a cringing thing it is difficult to do anything but feel disgust for.”</p><p>“And werewolves in general?”</p><p>“If I could drive the disease away forever,” Snape said, and finally met Fleamont’s eyes, “what reason would I have to fear?”</p><p>Fleamont smiled a little. Working to destroy a nightmare, he could understand. It was essentially what he had done when he had sacrificed Pettigrew. “Very well. Leave me some means to contact you that would be more secure than an owl, and we will consider that.”</p><p>The door of the drawing room banged open as Snape nodded. Fleamont turned around in time to receive a whirlwind of arms and legs. He went down to hug Harry, and Snape slipped out of the room behind Harry’s shoulder.</p><p>“Grand! Grand! Did you see it? I stole Remus’s wand from him!”</p><p>Fleamont laughed and complimented his grandson, but he also bowed his head so that he could close his eyes and feel the beating of Harry’s strong, uncorrupted heart against his arms.</p><p>He had won, again. And for Harry’s sake, for Harry’s enjoyment, for Harry’s continued safety, he would burn far more of the world than a Blood-Devourer.</p><p><b>The End</b>.</p>
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